High ampere-rated circuit breakers such as described within U.S. Pat. No. 4,001,742 entitled "Circuit Breaker Having Improved Operating Mechanism" are capable of interrupting several thousand amperes of circuit current at several hundred volts potential. Electrical terminals are used with such circuit breakers for connection with remote accessories for indication and control purposes. To facilitate connection with the connectors on the terminals, the insulative terminal assemblies are generally attached to the exterior of the circuit breaker case. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/305,539 filed Sep. 14, 1994 entitled "Crimp On Screw Terminal Assembly" describes the attachment of terminal assemblies to an exterior part of the circuit breaker case to provide connection with internal electrical components.
In some industrial applications, it is necessary to mount the circuit breaker within an enclosure and move the circuit breaker in and out of the enclosure to make and break electrical connection within an electrical power distribution circuit. In such arrangements the terminals arranged on the outside surface of the circuit breaker assembly are arranged for automatic connection and disconnection from terminals arranged within the enclosure. Such terminal are then considered "secondary disconnect" terminals to distinguish the terminals from the main primary current-carrying circuit breaker terminals. Examples of prior arrangements of such secondary disconnect terminals are found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,139,748 entitled "Secondary Contacts for Drawout Switchgear"; U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,701 entitled "Secondary Disconnect Plugs for Programmable Circuit Breakers" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,743,715 entitled "Draw-In and Draw-Out Mechanism of an Electrical Circuit Breaker with Main and Auxiliary Circuits".
When such circuit breakers are used to communicate with other similar circuit breakers as well as providing connection with remote auxiliary devices, a large number of secondary disconnects must be used to insure sufficient electrical connection for all these functions.
The purpose of this invention is to describe a multi-terminal disconnect arrangement having sufficient electrical terminal connectors to provide such a large number of supplemental electrical and electronic functions.